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“Well, I approve of your sentiments, Donald,
but, nevertheless, it’s a poor practise for
a gentleman to fight with a mucker, although,”
he added whimsically, “when I was your age I
always enjoyed a go with such fellows. That man
you just roughed is George Chirakes, and he’s
a bad one. Knifed three of his countrymen in
a drunken riot in Darrow last fall, but got out of
it on a plea of self-defense. Keep your eye on
the brute. He may try to play even, although there’s
no real courage in his kind. They’re born
bushwhackers,” The Laird glanced at his watch
and saw that it still lacked eight minutes of train-time.
“Wait for me a minute,” he told his son.
“I want to telephone Daney on a little matter
I overlooked this afternoon.”

He entered the telephone-booth in the station and
called up Andrew Daney.

“McKaye speaking,” he announced.
“I’ve just discovered Donald has an enemy—­that
Greek, Chirakes, from Darrow. Did Dirty Dan come
in from the woods to-night?”

“I believe he did. He usually comes in
at week-ends.”

“Look him up immediately, and tell him to keep
an eye on Donald, and not to let him out of his sight
until the boy boards the logging-train to-morrow night
to go back to the woods. Same thing next week-end,
and when Donald completes his tour of duty in the
woods, transfer Dan from the logging-camp and give
him a job in the mill, so he can watch over the boy
when he’s abroad nights. He is not, of course,
to let my son know he is under surveillance.”

“I will attend to the matter immediately,”
Daney promised, and The Laird, much relieved, hung
up and rejoined his son.

“Take care of yourself—­and watch
that Greek, boy,” he cautioned, as he swung
aboard the train.

Donald stood looking after the train until the tail-lights
had disappeared round a curve.

XII

Daney readily discovered in a pool-hall the man he
sought. “Dirty Dan” O’Leary
was a chopper in the McKaye employ, and had earned
his sobriquet, not because he was less cleanly than
the average lumberjack but because he was what his
kind described as a “dirty” fighter.
That is to say, when his belligerent disposition led
him into battle, which it frequently did, Mr. O’Leary’s
instinct was to win, quickly and decisively, and without
consideration of the niceties of combat, for a primitive
person was Dirty Dan. Fast as a panther, he was
as equally proficient in the use of all his extremities,
and, if hard pressed, would use his teeth. He
was a stringy, big-boned man of six feet, and much
too tall for his weight, wherefore belligerent strangers
were sometimes led to the erroneous conclusion that
Mr. O’Leary would not be hard to upset.
In short, he was a wild, bad Irishman who had gotten
immovably fixed in his head an idea that old Hector
McKaye was a “gr-rand gintleman,” and
a gr-rand gintleman was one of the three things that
Dirty Dan would fight for, the other two being his
personal safety and the love of battle.